US stocks hit new highs, BTC underperforms but doesn't mean fundamentals are weakening: Capital is rotating tracks, not leaving crypto

Recently, the US stock market has been hitting new highs, but Bitcoin's performance this year has been relatively weak, appearing to be a "decoupled rally."

However, some institutions interpret this as not a deterioration of the crypto industry, but a reallocation of capital.

Hashdex believes that current market capital is flowing more toward AI infrastructure, IPOs, and interest rate trading themes, rather than digital assets themselves. But looking at on-chain data, the crypto network is actually not weak: stablecoin trading volume has already exceeded last year's full-year level, the scale of RWA (Real World Asset tokenization) has grown over 60% this year, and on-chain transaction activity is also hitting new highs.

In other words, price action and on-chain fundamentals are "temporarily diverging."

Charles Schwab, on the other hand, explains Bitcoin's performance from a cycle perspective, stating that it is still in a typical post-halving recovery phase. Historically, Bitcoin often takes a long time to return above miners' cost, which is currently around $95k. The average market holding cost is about $80k, meaning upward moves may still face selling pressure from those breaking even.

They also add that although the four-year halving cycle is not an iron law, it does influence market behavior over the long term. As the market matures, future volatility may be smaller than in the past, but the cyclical logic will not completely disappear.

In one sentence: Capital hasn't left crypto; it's just rotating between different assets, and Bitcoin remains in the middle stage of its cyclical recovery.